hard drive sector testing on Ubuntu

[Rashkae]

On 09/29/2012 02:09 AM, Nils Kassube wrote:

>
> AFAIK badblocks wouldn't restore the data.
>

Badblocks non-destructive read-write (-n) test will, indeed, restore the 
data.  Of course, it would still be a good idea to have a good backup 
first, and use a UPS.

Also note that by default, badblocks repeats the test with 4 different 
patterns.  On a modern >1TB drive, that ... can take a while, so I would 
usually use -t 0xaa (or -t random) to only do 1 pass.

Do not even thing of doing this on an SDD.  Probably not a good idea on 
those hybrid drives either.  Reasons are outside the scope of this quick 
e-mail, just don't do it.


And finally, this whole methology has been deprecated for almost a 
decade.  Sector testing should be handled transparently by the drive 
firware.  Use smartctl to examine the results (or initiate a full test.) 
  At most, you should only ever have to do a read test to force the 
drive to scan the entire thing end to end.  (something like ddrescue 
/dev/sd? /dev/null -f will work nicely.)